The New Education Part 15

"A large number of women were born too soon to get the advantage of the courses in domestic science now being offered in our high schools,"

comments Mr. Dyer in his dry way. Scores of such women anxious to learn all that was known about domestic arts const.i.tuted a cla.s.s for which the school was well equipped to provide. "Then suppose we give them what they need," said Mr. Dyer. Just fancy--a continuous course in domestic science! Yet there it is, in Cincinnati, with an enrollment of more than eleven hundred women, attending the public schools to learn domestic arts. What could be more rational than this Cincinnati system of making a school--even though it be a continuation school--to fit the educational needs of Cincinnati people--grown-ups and children alike?

VIII Special Schools for Special Children

The Cincinnati schools provide for special children as well as for special cla.s.ses of people. First there are the unusually bright children, who "mark-time" in the ordinary cla.s.ses. These children were placed in "rapidly moving cla.s.ses." While omitting none of the work, they were allowed to go as fast as their mental development would allow them, instead of as slowly as the other members of the cla.s.s made it necessary to move. At the beginning the teacher found these exceptionally able children lacking in effort and attention, qualities which they had not needed to keep their place in the grades. "The extra work and responsibility stimulated their mental activity, increased their power of attention, fostered thoroughness and accuracy, developed resourcefulness and initiative, and those other qualities necessary for leaders.h.i.+p." Why should it not be so? Why should not the specially able child be taught as thoroughly as the defective one? Yet Mr. Dyer, speaking from experience, remarks: "Strange to say, it is harder to establish such cla.s.ses than defective and r.e.t.a.r.ded ones." Strange indeed!

For the sub-normal or r.e.t.a.r.ded children Cincinnati has made ample provision. Spending from a quarter to a half of their time in manual work, the children are no longer tortured with the doing of things beyond their powers. The overgrown boys have instruction in shop work.

The overgrown girls have a furnished flat in which they learn the arts of home-making at first hand. There are in all over four hundred children in these schools.

Similar accommodations are provided for other special groups. The anaemic and tubercular children are taught in two open-air schools; six teachers are detailed to instruct the deaf children; one teacher devotes her time to the blind children, and ten teachers are employed to take charge of those children who are mentally defective. Thus, by adjusting the schools to the needs of special groups of people, and of special individuals, Cincinnati is providing an education which reaches the individual members of the community.

IX Playground and Summer Schools

The vacation school is planned to meet the needs of the children in the crowded districts during the hot summer months. "For that reason," says Mr. Dyer, "it provides industrial work of all kinds una.s.sociated with book instruction, but mingled with a great amount of recreational activity--excursions, stories, folk-dancing, and a wide variety of games."

The field of industrial activity is a broad one, including cooking, nursing, housekeeping, sewing, knitting, crocheting, weaving and basketry; drawing and color work, brush and plastic work; bench work with tools, making useful articles; sports and games, including folk-dancing for girls and ball for boys. The primary and kindergarten cla.s.ses offer a delightful round of song, story, games, excursions, paper work and other forms of construction. For the girls who have to take care of babies there are special cla.s.ses. The boys make useful articles in the shops, and the girls, in sewing-room and cooking laboratory, learn to do the things around which the interests of the home always center. By co-operation with the park commissioners, the playgrounds were made an integral part of the summer school work.

Besides the recreational summer school Cincinnati has maintained for the past five years an academic summer school, in which children might make up back work in school, or do special work in any line which was of particular interest to them. In these schools "the very best instructors that can be secured" are employed, and their recommendations are accepted by the school princ.i.p.als when the fall term opens. "This school is one of the means taken to deal with the problem of repeaters in our schools," says Mr. Dyer. "Instead of requiring children who are behind to fall back a year, they may, if they are not hopeless failures, but only deficient in a few studies, remove their deficiencies in the summer school and go on with their cla.s.s. We have followed up these pupils,"

Mr. Dyer adds, "and found that a normal percentage keep up with the cla.s.s in succeeding years."

X Mr. Dyer and the Men Who Stood With Him

A spirit of comrades.h.i.+p and hearty co-operation breathes from every nook and cranny of the Cincinnati schools. Princ.i.p.als and teachers alike sense the fact. Alike they aim toward the upbuilding of the schools.

"Never in my life have I found such a spirit of mutual helpfulness,"

says a.s.sistant Superintendent Roberts. "Every teacher has felt that she had a part to play, that she counted, that her suggestions were worth while, and she has worked earnestly toward this end."

"Everywhere I encounter the same willingness to co-operate with the schools," said Superintendent Condon, after spending three months in the place that Mr. Dyer vacated when he became superintendent of the Boston schools. "There is a heartiness in it, too, that grips a man."

"There is always the jolliest good-fellows.h.i.+p in the Schoolman's Club,"

exclaimed a grammar school princ.i.p.al. "It's always 'Roberts' and 'Lyon'

and 'Dyer' there. They're as good as the rest, no better. We all go there to work, and to work hard for the schools."

On such a spirit is the school system of Cincinnati founded. From its point of vantage, set upon its high hill of ministry to child needs, it flashes like a searchlight through the storm of nineteenth century pedagogical obscurity. The optimist sings a new, glad song; the pessimist is confounded; the searcher after educational truth uncovers reverently before this masterpiece of educational organization, this practical demonstration of the wonders that may be accomplished where head and heart work together through the schools, for the children.

Such is the triumph, but whose the glory?

"It is not mine," protests Mr. Dyer, "I did only my part." "Nor mine,"

"Nor mine," echo his a.s.sistants. Truly, wisely, bravely spoken. The glory is not to Mr. Dyer, nor to any other one man or woman--the glory is to Mr. Dyer and the men and women who worked with him for the Cincinnati schools.

"My predecessor was an able organizer," explained Mr. Dyer. "He left things in splendid condition, and we took up his work. There were five things which marked great epochs in the upbuilding of the Cincinnati schools:

"First, we established the merit system for the appointment of teachers.

"Second, we improved the school buildings and equipment.

"Third, we organized special courses for children who were not able to profit by the regular work.

"Fourth, by putting applied work in the grades we gave the children a chance to use their hands as well as their heads.

"Fifth, we enlarged the school system by adding buildings and courses until there was a place in the schools for every boy and girl, man and woman in Cincinnati who wanted an education.

"That was the sum total of our work. It was a long and difficult task."

Mr. Dyer's tall form straightened a trifle. His earnest, determined face relaxed. From under his bushy eyebrows flashed a gleam of triumph--the triumph of a strong, purposeful, successful man. "But when it was all over," he concluded, "and when the things for which we had striven were accomplished we knew that they were worth while."

When Mr. Dyer left his position in Cincinnati to become Superintendent of the Boston schools, there was, on every hand, a feeling of loss and of uncertainty among those most interested in the city's educational problems. During those months which elapsed between Mr. Dyer's departure for Boston and the election of his successor there was a feeling that, after all, perhaps he was not replaceable.

Then the successor came,--a quiet man, with a constructive imagination that enabled him to grasp, readily and completely, Cincinnati's educational need. There had been an era of radical educational adjustment in the city. The school system had been changed,--artfully changed, it is true--but changed, nevertheless, in all of the essential elements of its being. Some of the changes had been made with such rapidity that their foundations had not been fully completed. The brilliant school policy which Mr. Dyer had inaugurated needed rounding out for fulfilment and completion. Randall J. Condon saw these things; and he saw, furthermore, that in a community so awakened as Cincinnati, almost any educational program was feasible, so long as it remained reasonable.

The Cincinnati school people who went to Providence for the purpose of inviting Mr. Condon to take charge of the Cincinnati schools, felt the constructive power of his leaders.h.i.+p. Providence had been educationally transformed, and Mr. Condon was the man responsible for the transformation.

The people of Cincinnati have every cause to congratulate themselves upon the new school head. At the outset Mr. Condon said,--"I purpose, to the best of my ability, to live up to and follow out the policies inaugurated by Mr. Dyer." With the utmost fidelity he has kept his word.

There is far more in Mr. Condon's administration than a mere follow-up policy. Everywhere he is building. In the face of a difficult financial situation which compels a serious curtailment of expenses for the time being, he is insisting upon additional kindergartens, extended high school accommodations, a more intimate correlation of the elementary and high school system, and an extensive system of recreation and social centers. It is upon the latter point that Mr. Condon is laying the greatest emphasis at the outset of his administration.

The Cincinnati policy which Mr. Condon has inaugurated with regard to civic centers is admirably summed up in his statement of the case. "A larger use of the school house for social, recreational and civic purposes should be encouraged. The school house belongs to all of the people, and should be open to all the people upon equal terms,--as civic centers for the free discussion of all matters relating to local and city government, and for the non-partisan consideration of all civic questions; as recreational centers, especially for the younger members of the community, to include the use of the baths and gymnasiums for games and sports, and other physical recreations, the use of cla.s.s-rooms and halls for music, dramatics, and other recreational activities, and for more distinct social purposes; as educational centers in which the more specific educational facilities and equipment may be used by cla.s.ses or groups of younger or older people, in any direction which makes for increased intelligence, and for greater economic and educational efficiency; as social centers in which the community may undertake a larger social service in behalf of its members,--stations from which groups and organizations of social workers may prosecute any non-partisan and non-sectarian work for the improvement of the social and economic conditions of the neighborhood, rendering any service which may help to improve the condition of the homes, giving a.s.sistance to the needy, disseminating information, helping to employment, and in general affording the community in its organized capacity an opportunity to serve in a larger measure the needs of the individual members." Here is, indeed, a broad-gauge social school policy, to which the administrative authorities of the Cincinnati schools are fully committed.

The movement for social centers in the schools is to be under the direction of a social secretary appointed by the superintendent. Until the organization is more highly perfected, princ.i.p.als are free, under certain restrictions, to open their schools for cla.s.ses, groups, and all other legitimate community activities.

Mr. Condon's activities in the direction of socialized school buildings finds a ready response. "There was already a large use of a number of the schools for community meetings--for welfare a.s.sociations, for boys'

and girls' study clubs, and for musical and social gatherings." The program is a program of extension, rather than of innovation. It has already won the approval of the citizens.h.i.+p.

Spontaneity must be the soul of such a movement. "It was my strong conviction that the development of such a social movement should come from the people themselves, not that a ready-made program or plan should be given them, but that they should develop their own." One by one centers are being formed. The Board of Education furnishes the building, the local social center organization pays the immediate expenses which its activities incur. The movement has been started right. "I am a great believer in democracy," Mr. Condon says. "The people can be trusted to settle social questions as they should be settled, provided all sides can be fully presented and time taken for deliberation. The school house affords the one opportunity where all can meet on common ground as American citizens and as good neighbors, where the question of wealth and position may be forgotten, and where what a man is in himself, and what he is willing to do for the common good, counts most."

Such is the spirit in which Mr. Dyer, the men and women who worked with him, and the men and women who succeeded him, have striven for the advancement of education; such the spirit of co-operation and progressiveism which dominates this great city school system.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 21: Much of this material appeared originally in Educational Foundations.]

CHAPTER VIII

THE OYLER SCHOOL OF CINCINNATI

I An Experiment in Social Education

On the west side of Cincinnati, separated from the main part of the town by railroad yards, waste land and stagnant water, surrounded by factories and a myriad of little homes, stands the Oyler School. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" queried a doubter. Answers, in bell tones, the philosopher, "If a man can build a better house or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he fix his home in the woods, the world will find a path to his door." Because Oyler has built a better school in a better community the world sits at Oyler's feet to learn of its experiment in social education.

The first time that I went to the Oyler School I encountered a Committee of Manufacturers. A Committee of Manufacturers in a public school during business hours! These men had met to talk with the school princ.i.p.al over the location of a library, which the entire community had worked to secure. When the time came to go before the Park Board over in the center of the city, to secure a playground near the Oyler School, the local bank furnished automobiles, and dozens of business men, leaving their offices, took the opportunity to endorse the work of the school, and to second its demands that play s.p.a.ce be given to West End children.

The manufacturers have become interested because in less than a decade the Oyler School has changed the face of the community, creating harmony out of discord, and order out of chaos.